“With respect, ma’am,” we heard Travis say as they drew closer, “I’m not sure I fully understand how a poorly knotted tie can undermine the Collective.”
It was said in a sarcastic tone that the Yellow woman missed.
“A sloppy half-Windsor is the first symptom of serial indolence,” she replied in the patronizing voice that Yellows reserved for Rule-breakers, “and ignoring the infraction gives the impression that it is acceptable to be inappropriately attired. The next day it might be badly polished shoes, then uncouth language, showing off and impoliteness. Before one knows it, the rot of disharmony would start to disassemble everything that we know and cherish.”
She then said something about how he was a “disgrace to his hue,” and they took a footpath toward the village.
“Who was the Yellow?” asked my father.
“Miss Bunty McMustard,” explained Stafford, picking up our cases, “deputy snitch and unwavering supporter of Sally Gamboge, the Yellow prefect. Bunty’s a nasty piece of work, and totally untrustworthy. If I tell you she’s the nicest Yellow in authority, it will give you an idea of how bad the others are.”
“The least bitey piranha?”
“Got it in one. Speaking of piranhas, watch out for Mrs. Gamboge’s son. His name’s Courtland, and he’s the best.”
“The best what?”
“The best avoided. He and Bunty are due to be married, as soon as Courtland gets around to asking her.”
The porter picked up our cases and placed them in the back of his cycle-taxi. We settled ourselves in the front, and he pedaled off at a brisk pace on the smooth Perpetulite roadway.
As we neared the factory I could hear the clanking and grinding of industry from deep within, while on the air there was a sharp taste like burned cooking oil.
“Every square yard of linoleum you’ve ever walked on would have been produced here,” Stafford announced proudly. “Back in 00427, East Carmine hosted Jollity Fair. The ‘House of Linoleum’ was the focal point—a building made entirely from linoleum. They even developed a new foodstuff especially for the occasion: Bisquitoleum. It’s still a local delicacy, even today.”
“Any good?”
“What it lacks in taste, it makes up for in longevity. We have a linoleum museum, too. Would you like a quick visit? I do the guided tours.”
“Perhaps later.”
“Everyone says that,” replied the porter, crestfallen. “Do you mind if I loosen my tie? The day is hot.”
Dad gave his permission, and we pedaled on. The going was easy on the smooth roadway, and after a few minutes we came to a stone-arch bridge that had a weathered WELCOME TO EAST CARMINE notice next to it. As we passed the sign, I saw a young woman with long dark hair standing by the side of the road. She was holding a swinging pendulum in the air above her palm, and next to her on the parapet was an open notebook. She stared at us in a strange, off-kilter manner.
“That was Lucy Ochre,” said the porter as soon as we had passed, “Mr. Ochre’s daughter. A bit of an oddball.”
“What’s with the pendulum?”
“She’s searching for harmonic pathways —a musical energy that runs through the Collective, she calls it.”
“What do the prefects think?”
“They think she’s a bit odd,” he replied with a shrug, “but belief in odd things isn’t against the Rules, as long as it’s done on your own time, and you don’t try to convince anyone else.”
Dad turned to look at her as we cycled past, but the girl had returned her attention to her pendulum.
Soon after the bridge we crested a rise and found ourselves within sight of the village. It was a low-lying, highly fenestrated conurbation with whitewashed walls and a roofline bewhiskered with heliostats, chimney pots and water heaters. Between us and the village was an empty landscape of low, grassy mounds interspersed with occasional stacks of standing masonry, weathered concrete and the odd finger of rusty iron. East Carmine, despite being on the very Outer Fringes of the Collective, had once been big.
Back at Jade-under-Lime we had barely five streets of abandoned housing, but here the rough landscape continued for almost a half mile in every direction.
“East Carmine is only a fraction of the size it once was,” remarked Stafford. “The deFacting wasn’t quite as severe over this way, and one can still find artifacture that’s almost perfect. I restore vintage office equipment in my spare time. I have six working staplers and a Gestetner stencil duplicator. I can punch holes at competitive rates—and my recipe for black ink is famous all over the sector.”
We continued past the undulating grassland, the ancient layout of the old town easily discerned from a crisscrossing of smooth, grassed-over roads dotted with eroded mailboxes and streetlamps. There was little in the way of trees or low shrubs, as this was an area traditionally kept for pasture and reserved to accommodate any of the Previous who might return. Once, it was presumed, the houses had simply stood empty, waiting. But time, weather and neglect had taken their toll, and all that remained was these soft grassy mounds and an inviolable Rule that they be kept that way. No one seriously considered that the once-numerous Previous would come back, but Rules are rules.
“What do you think of our crackletrap?” asked Stafford, indicating the large structure that had been placed atop the flak tower.
“Impressive,” I murmured.
“The prefects—Mrs. Gamboge in particular—are very big on the dangers of lightning,” explained the porter. “It’s been finished only since Winternox, and has already been struck over a hundred times.”
The lightning lure was a wooden latticework affair topped with a domed bronze attractor about thirty feet in diameter. Since every house in the Collective had a metallic daylight-collection device on its roof, homes were highly susceptible to a wayward bolt, which would course down the steel adjustment rods and cause electrical mayhem within the house. The luckless were sometimes fused to anything metallic, sometimes half vaporized and at other times simply dead in their beds, their eyeballs and internal organs boiled to something closely resembling minestrone soup. Lurid accounts and photographs were published every week in Spectrum.
“I expect you take lightning-avoidance issues seriously where you come from?” asked Stafford.
“Our Council are more concerned about swan attack, but lightning isn’t ignored,” replied my father. “We have a fleet of a half-dozen specially adapted Fords, each with a bronze attractor mounted on a pylon in the flatbed. They’re driven in to intercept a storm when the direction and severity are known.”
“We have an anomaly ten miles or so upwind,” said Stafford, “so ball lightning can be a problem in these parts. There are plans to erect a steel catch-net on the Western Hills, but it’s mostly talk.”
Fork lightning could be easily lured from areas of habitation, but ball lightning was a law unto itself. It drifted along with the breeze, became caught in eddies and sometimes entered houses. It was sticky, too, and would attach itself to anything organic. A bad ball strike could leave the victim almost completely incinerated; nervous residents who were unspooned etched their names on steel plates to keep in their pockets, just in case.
We continued on the road down to the village itself, a knot of houses on a raised hillock. The dwellings were built in the Salvagesque style, a hodgepodge of construction methods using a wide variety of materials ranging from the deeply ancient carved stone to reused timber, rubber roof tiles, brick, adobe and, in some places, the more modern oak-framed wattle and daub. As we moved off the Perpetulite and onto the cobbled street, Dad asked the porter about Robin Ochre, the previous swatchman.